The
Lives of a Bengal Lancer (1935)
is a sweeping, escapist adventure tale of three British officers of the 41st
Regiment of the Bengal Lancers, stationed in northwest India. The Paramount
Pictures film was loosely adapted ("suggested") from the 1930 novel
of the same name written by Major Francis Yates-Brown. The Lancers were historically
prominent as defenders of India's NW frontier, notably the area of the Khyber
Pass, inhabited by rebellious tribesmen.

This film represented one of the best examples of the many films made about Indian military adventures, although it retained its paternalistic, pro-colonial attitude typical of the time period. Director Henry Hathaway and Ernest B. Schoedsack shot the background footage on location in British India starting in 1930, which was then cleverly interwoven into the Hollywood production. It was one of actor Gary Cooper's earlier films and helped to make him a star. Franchot Tone was starring in two of the biggest films of 1935, this film and Best Picture-winning Mutiny on the Bounty (1935) for which he was nominated as Best Actor.

It received eight Academy Award nominations (with one win, for its uncredited
Assistant Directors Paul Wing and Clem Beauchamp, who directed the action
sequences). The category of Assistant Director was discontinued after
1937! The other nominations were for Best Director (Henry Hathaway, his sole
career nomination), Best Picture, Best Screenplay, Best Film Editing, Best
Sound Recording, and Best Art Direction.

The Story

The film opens in Army Headquarters in India, where it was
stated that the British were protecting 300 million people along India's
troubled northern boundary, notably the Bengal Lancers. They are concerned
about the treacherous and villainous "clever dog" chieftain named Mohammed Khan. On the border, impulsive and insubordinate Scotch-Canadian, Lt. Alan McGregor (Gary Cooper) orders counter-fire from machine guns to retaliate against sniping enemy Afridi fire, after the fall of his commanding officer Col. Hendrickson and other soldiers. He deliberately disobeys the orders of Colonel Stone (Sir Guy Standing) and Major Hamilton (C. Aubrey Smith), interpreting
Stone's commands as stubborn and stiff (and afterwards calling him a martinet and a "ramrod").
His actions rout the attackers, although he is reprimanded by the displeased
Colonel.

McGregor is ordered to pick up two new replacement soldiers
from Delhi at the frontier's train station: former Blues regiment member
- the brash and flippant Lt. Forsythe (Franchot Tone) and inexperienced
Lt. Donald Stone (Richard Cromwell) - the raw and untested son of the garrison's
high-ranking commander. [Major Hamilton had arranged - without the knowledge
of the colonel - for his son to be with the Bengal Lancers.] Eager to serve,
21 year-old Stone has been assigned to the frontier fresh from England's
Sandhurst military college, although his strict disciplinarian father vows
to not show favoritism towards him. The backstory was that Colonel Stone
had been divorced from his American wife when he chose military service
over family life. The next morning, the young naive son is stunned when
his father coldly treats him as an ordinary junior recruit ("you've got a great deal to learn"). He watches as his stern father effectively threatens a captured Muslim rebel with hanging after which his body would be sewn up in a pigskin. [The rebel fears he would not be pure and would forfeit a heavenly prize: "in heaven, he wouldn't get the 48 maidens allotted by Allah."]

In his office, Colonel Stone tells his son directly: "Don't try to
take advantage. Don't expect any favoritism...You've got to start from the
bottom. Learn everything, and if you don't measure up, out." McGregor
realizes the young lad has been miffed by his father and could become bitter,
stating that: "the old man has ice-water in his veins" and
he soon takes him under his wing as his ward. Stone also addresses McGregor,
warning him about expressing either sentimentality or impertinence in the
Army.

During their stay in common quarters, where they drink tea,
bathe, and lounge, Forsythe often plays a snake charmer's pipe to deliberately
irritate McGregor as part of their ongoing friendly rivalry. On one occasion,
he is unaware that he has attracted a cobra snake to his side, where it
waves back and forth to the music as he fearfully continues playing. McGregor
is amused and jokes to the panicking Forsythe: "Of course, if you stop playing...You know, you might live a couple of hours. I had a friend once that lived for two days" -
but then relents and shoots it dead. [It is one of the film's most memorable
scenes.]

After the disappearance of Lt. Barrett (Colin Tapley), who
was on a spy mission to gather information about a suspected mission of
the ambitious Khan to overthrow the British by acquiring 2 million rounds
of ammunition and providing it to local tribal rebels ("enough to start a small-sized war"), McGregor is assigned to discover his whereabouts. He is commanded to cross the frontier's border, with one NCO and 10 men, and supplies (including ammunition) - ostensibly it will be a hunting expedition. He chooses Forsythe to accompany him, to Stone's dismay - who then questions his cold-blooded father about his service (and later goes on a drinking binge). During the expedition, McGregor locates Barrett (disguised as a sword-wielding Muslim warrior) and learns that Khan is stirring up all the border tribes and "effecting
a coalition of all the tribes."

McGregor reports back to Lt. Stone, describing Khan's nefarious
warring activities among the mountainous border tribes. He is promising
to supply them with 2 million rounds of ammunition. Coincidentally and
slightly suspiciously, 2 million rounds of ammunition are being delivered
by convoy to their supposed British ally, the Emir of Gopal named Othman
Ali Bahadur (Akim Tamiroff), with Khan plotting to steal the goods during
their transportation. McGregor suggests commencing hostilities immediately
(without orders and "without reporting this to the intelligence"). Overhearing McGregor's urging to fight back, Major General Sir Thomas Woodley (Lumsden Hare) - the chief of Intelligence - seconds the idea, takes credit and orders: "Col
Stone, your regiment will leave at dawn for Gopal."

The regiment of Bengal Lancers leaves early the next morning, with hung-over young Stone joining Forsythe and McGregor (and Col. Stone), on a mission to Gopal to investigate the Emir, although they claim that they are only journeying for the sport of pig hunting (or pig-sticking). The group of officers are lavishly entertained in the Emir's palace by Indian dancers, where Col. Stone is introduced by the friendly rajah to evil chieftain Mohammed Khan (Douglas Dumbrille). After being slipped an enticing note by Tania (Kathleen Burke), Khan's mistress (named Madame Volkanskaya), Stone sneaks away after the pig-hunt - against orders - to meet her. The duplicitous woman is actually a beautiful Russian spy (that Stone had met earlier on the train to the frontier), who aids Khan in kidnapping and capturing Lt. Stone.

Bound and gagged, Stone is taken on horseback to Khan's mountain fortress as a hostage. Khan had also seized Barrett, blinded him, and killed him. McGregor is able to take captive one of Khan's Afridi natives, coercing him to reveal where Stone is held (at Khan's stronghold at Mogala), by using the same tactic of threatening the rebel with the sacrilege of being wrapped in a pigskin. But then Colonel Stone staunchly refuses to rescue his son with a regiment of lancers, arguing that the mission to protect the ammunition delivery would be jeopardized if the British were lured to Mogala:

I am not going to do precisely what Mohammed Khan has planned that I
should do. He took my son to goad me into pursuing him to draw the lancers
from their position. He's mistaken his man...In our present position, the
regiment holds Mohammed Khan checkmate. The regiment stays here...I cannot
weaken the strength of the regiment in this emergency. And I can't permit
you or any other officer to risk their lives for Mr. Stone.

Then, the Colonel admits he knows his son's likely fate,
like that of Barrett: "I
know what may happen to my son through his own disobedience and folly." Astonished
that the Colonel chooses not to save his own son (McGregor: "So you'll
sit here with your regiment while they kill your son by inches"), McGregor
insubordinately decides to save Stone on his own, even though he is put under
house arrest (with Forsythe appointed as his guard). Forsythe also insists
on joining him for the rescue. Technically deserting their posts, they both
disguise themselves as dark-skinned Indian native merchants in a caravan
and enter Khan's fortress at Mogala, far north of the Khyber. While selling
their wares in front of border chieftain Khan, they are quickly recognized
as two British officers. Forsythe makes an aside to McGregor: "I told
you, this Mardi Gras would be a washout." Although they are discovered
and apprehended, they are invited as Khan's guests for dinner, accompanying
Stone. The charming Khan proposes that he will let the officers return to
their regiment if they answer two simple questions: "By what route is
the ammunition train coming and just where does the regiment plan to meet
it for convoy?" He
treacherously adds, with the film's most famous, oft-quoted threatening line:

Well, gentlemen. We have ways to make men talk.

When the officers refuse to cooperate, he proposes imprisonment
and torture: "I regret this, but thanks to your colonel's cold heart and cold brain, I have no other choice, and very little time." He labels his own torture methods as "absurd and unpleasant extremes." His
favorite and most effective method of torture is to drive bamboo slivers
beneath their finger-nails and light them. McGregor is tortured first, then
Forsythe, but both withstand the pain and neither reveals the ammunition
route. Then after they are both thrown into a dungeon, Donald rapidly breaks
down, screams and talks, further showing resentment toward his cold-hearted
father. The prisoners' cure for boredom is by betting millions of non-existent
rupees on cockroach races (the bugs are given the names of their enemies)
within their dungeon cell.

Young Donald admits to his two buddies that he saw no sense in resisting
the torture:

I told them, and why shouldn't I? For him? To stand there and watch and
know all the time I was gonna be next to have your nails torn off and those
pincers and burning sticks driven into you until - And things you can't
even talk about. Why should I stand all that? For what? For him? For a
service that makes him like he's been to me? He left me here, didn't he?
He knew what they'd do. He wouldn't come after me, not him. Regiment, service,
duty! Why should I stand what you did for them? Why should I? Why should
any of us? Why?

McGregor slaps Stone across the face: "I told you to forget it," and then explains his sense of stiff upper-lip British duty to loyally serve, echoing advice he had heard earlier from Major Hamilton: "There
are some things they don't teach you in military college. Can't, I guess.
India's big, you know. There are 300 million people and run by, uh, just
a handful of men. The job comes first. Like old Ramrod, you can't let death
move you, nor love. And it's like - how can I tell you what it's all about
when I don't know myself."

Machine guns and 2 million rounds of ammunition are seized
and brought back to the Khan's fortress. Khan prepares himself for a deadly
counter-attack, boasting that the Colonel's Bengal Lancers, an attacking
force of 300 gathering outside the gates of his stronghold at Mogala, will
be annihilated. Colonel Stone is adamant on attacking even though it will
be a "costly" battle: "It's
worth the whole regiment." Khan tells his three British prisoners that
if the Colonel is captured alive during the skirmish, that they would all
die, and then gloats: "I
shall have the pleasure of bringing the Colonel face to face with a son who
betrayed his Empire."

Meanwhile as the Lancers advance forward with bugles and trumpets blowing, the three captive officers plot their escape from their dungeon cell. After exploding the lock (with stolen shells filled with gunpowder), McGregor and Forsythe commandeer a machine gun, open fire and shoot down some of the rebels in the stronghold's inner courtyard. McGregor heroically sprints toward the armory - wounded in the process, and sacrifices himself when he blows up the ammunition supply. As the Lancers break through the outer gates, Donald courageously and single-handedly (to redeem himself) tackles Khan on horseback and stabs him to death in the back. The leaderless natives instantly surrender.

In the film's final scene, at the parade ground of the 41st
Regiment of the Bengal Lancers, Col. Stone pins a distinguished service
medal on Lt. Forsythe. Lt. Stone is proudly honored by his father with
another distinguished service medal for his "conspicuous gallantry and devotion to duty - he attacked singlehanded, a group of the enemy and killed their leader thus demoralizing hostile forces at a moment when the success of our arms at Mogala was in the balance." And Stone awards McGregor a posthumous Victoria Cross medal ("For valor - at the sacrifice of his life, he destroyed enemy ammunition supplies, contributing thereby to the success of our arms in the action at Mogala"),
pinned to the saddlecloth of McGregor's riderless horse.